The Suicide Shop / Магазинчик Самоубийств

33

'I know, I know perfectly well, I know exactly! What do you think? Everything has changed here while I was depressed; I don't recognise anything any more. It's not the same shop any more - a cow wouldn't be able to find her calf here!'
Mishima has vaguely recovered. He's wearing a waistcoat and checked shirt, while on his head there is a white cardboard cone, decorated with multicoloured circles. A piece of elastic stretches beneath his chin, holding on this hat, which is being observed doubtfully by the very serious man to whom he's speaking and explaining. 'And yet I had ideas for it to continue as it was before. I'd planned to organise an aeroplane cruise around the world. Nobody would have returned from it! We would have offered a selection of the most dangerous regional airlines in the world and the least reliable pilots. At Don't Give A Damn About Death, they had taken on about twenty of them - depressive alcoholics on tranquillisers and always with powder up their noses, even at the controls. We made sure all the luck was on our side. At each stop, the suicidal passengers would board a new dilapidated plane, wondering if it was going to crash into a mountain, at the bottom of an ocean, in a desert, on a town ... The people wouldn't have known in what part of the globe they were going to die. Yes, but there you go; we've changed our supplier.'
'You shouldn't complain,' comments the man Mishima is talking to, 'because things seem to be going rather well here.' He gazes around him at the large numbers of eager customers entering the Suicide Shop.
The customers kiss Lucrèce affectionately on both cheeks. 'How are you, Madame Tuvache? It's so good to come back to your shop.'
She, disguised as a phial of poison, with a headdress in the form of a cork, offers them the large dishes containing the culinary specialities of the day - Monday: suicidal lamb, beef stifled in steam, duck in blood - which she has noted down on the slate where she used to write the name of the day's poisoned cocktail.
She has had the double central display unit dismantled and taken down to the cellar to make way for a long table where the customers meet to think up solutions for the future of the world.
'To resolve the advance of the desert,' suggests one, 'you'd have to be able to transform the sand into a raw material useful to people, such as has already been done with the forests. Coal, petroleum, gas -'
'Without a doubt, by compacting it and heating it to extreme temperatures,' cuts in another, 'we could turn it into incredibly hard vitrified bricks, which would be vital to construction.'
'Oh yes!' exclaims a girl. 'And so each apartment, bridge or anything else that was built would be a small victory over the dunes.'
'The regions of the world that suffer the most from this calamity would become the wealthiest. That would be great.'
'I shall note down that idea,' enthuses Alan, sitting at the end of the table in an Aladdin costume. 'There's always a solution to everything. We must never despair.'
Hearing those words in his shop does something to Mishima ...
More and more people love to come here to meet, and to hope, in the Suicide Shop, which they now call TSS, like they might say YMCA.
Dumbfounded, Mishima prefers to stick to the shop's original ethos when facing the stern man in front of him. 'I wanted to install a letter box where customers could slip in a message explaining what they'd done. It's a good idea, don't you think? The relatives of the suicidal person, and friends if there were any, could have come to consult the letters which the dead person had written to them. I tell myself that doubtless afterwards, in their pain, as they explored the shelves they might perhaps have bought something for themselves. I'd planned for several weeks of promotion: hemp week, etc. And two for the price of one on Valentine's Day.'
Marilyn, disguised as the sexy and amusing fairy Carabosse in the fresh produce section, now only touches the customers with her magic wand: 'Zap, you're dead!' A small green light switches on and crackles as it throws out sparks from the tip of the wand as soon as it makes contact. The pretend suicides roll about on the floor, miming horrible convulsions, much to the dismay of Mishima, who despite everything banks the twelve euro-yens for the Death Ki-for any old kiss!
The shopkeeper pulls the elastic from under his chin, as it is pinching the skin of his neck. 'Can you see my daughter's pregnant? By the cemetery warden. She wants to give life.'
The man replies: 'You had three children yourself, so you must have felt some attachment to life.'
'Three children ... The third ...' Mishima puts things into perspective. 'I had planned to implement an idea my eldest had before he was corrupted by the youngest: a simple metal crown placed on the head. At the back there was a small articulated arm, at the end of which a magnifying glass was fixed. And so, in summer, people could commit suicide by sunstroke. All you'd have to do would be to sit in a place with no shade and adjust the magnifying glass until you found the burning point. When your hair started to singe, you'd just have to remain motionless. The concentrated point of the ray would burn the scalp, then the skull. In collecting up the desperate people, wisps of smoke would have been rising from the big, black holes in their burnt skulls ... But that's no longer on the cards, alas. Look at that one - my eldest - in whom I invested so much pride, see what he's become! A former anorexic with the real psychopathic temperament of a mass killer, he has discovered a new passion for - guess what! - pancakes! Frankly ... He stuffs himself with them from morn till night.'
Vincent, with very rounded cheeks and short red beard, eyes still furious beneath the head bandage, is dressed up as Death in a clinging black one-piece painted with white bones. Tossing soft pasta in a large salad bowl, he looks at his father, who comes over and pats his son's prominent abdomen. 'The skeleton's putting on a bit of padding, eh!'
Then Mishima turns to the visitor once again and says: 'As you can see, I had no lack of ideas. At one point it even made me feel a bit off-colour - and that's as long as it took the rest of the family to accomplish their treachery under the influence of the other eternally delighted one, the Optimist over there ... And now see what's happened. Look at this: our new disposable pistols fire blanks, and the only harm the Sweets of Death do is to teeth. As for the ropes for people to hang themselves, if I were to tell you ... And the sabres for seppuku serve as fly-swatters.'
'Yes, but ... what about our bit of business?' asks the visitor anxiously. He has the look of an official person who has been sent here on a special mission. 'It involves the collective suicide of all the members of the regional government! We can hardly give them fly-swatters.'
'What would you have liked?'
'I'm not really sure ... I've heard about that poison - Sandman? - if you have enough left in stock for forty people.'
Mishima calls to his wife, disguised as a twisted phial of poison, who is standing by the meeting table, listening to all the 'we could haves', 'we'd only have had tos', 'we're going to do this and thats', etc ...
'Lucrèce! Have you still got some belladonna, deadly gel and desert breath in the scullery?'
'What for?'
'What for ...' sighs the shopkeeper, facing the government envoy. 'I can assure you there are times when she loses the plot, that one ...'
Then he raises his voice and addresses his wife again: 'The government, recognising its own incompetence and its culpability, has decided to commit mass suicide tonight, live on TV! Can you prepare what's needed?'
'I'll go and see what I have! Will you help me, Alan?'
'Yes, Mother.'